Original Title: Ethereum is the trustware to power a digital world economy
Original Source: Consensys
Original Compilation and Translation: LenaXin, ChainCatcher
Every financial transaction carries an element of trust. Ethereum's digital trust enables the digitization of vast assets, capital, and financial transactions, greatly enhancing the efficiency of the global financial system, benefiting everyone from institutions and enterprises to consumers.
On July 30, Ethereum celebrated its tenth anniversary. On this occasion, Consensys released the "Industrialization of Trust" report, a detailed overview of Ethereum's investment case and the emerging technology category of "Trustware." "Trustware" is an infrastructure that industrializes the production of trust, allowing trust to be encoded as a digital commodity.
Consensys' research and analysis show that Ethereum has become the dominant blockchain platform, supporting over 50% of non-Bitcoin digital assets, including 60% of stablecoins, 60% of decentralized financial capital, and 80% of tokenized "real-world assets" such as stocks, money market funds, and bonds.
Trustware is an infrastructure that can upgrade the simulation concept of trust, such as notes and ledgers verified by human agents and auditors, endorsed by human insurance companies and regulators, to an equivalent digital trust concept generated by algorithms.
For centuries, human civilization has relied on various forms of trust infrastructure, from tribal kinship to large institutions such as governments, insurance companies, audit firms, and legal systems. While these systems have promoted cooperation and economic growth, the costs have been significant. It is estimated that humanity spends over $90 trillion annually on trust-related matters, including insurance ($80 trillion), legal systems (over $10 trillion), and auditing ($290 billion). This huge expenditure highlights a fundamental problem: the current trust models cannot effectively scale in the digital age. They are analog—slower, more expensive, and fragmented compared to the always-online, highly automated, and rapidly evolving digital economy they underpin.
Trustware bestows upon mundane data the foundational characteristics of trust through a fully algorithmic process: validity and finality. Validity ensures data consistency and correctness with mathematical certainty. Finality ensures the permanence of data, making it unchangeable without incurring significant costs.
Ethereum allows these attributes to be added to data in a scalable way without the need for ongoing human intervention, achieving trust at near-zero marginal cost. In this manner, leveraging its robust public network and breakthrough cryptographic economic algorithms capable of generating digital trust, Ethereum is able to significantly enhance financial transaction validation in terms of speed, cost, security, and scalability simultaneously.
For years, investors have viewed ETH as the "second-largest cryptocurrency." While not inaccurate, it misses the point. Today, they understand that ETH represents the explosive growth of stablecoins and other tokenized assets, seeing discussions of these assets in their everyday business channels and possibly even using them in daily life.
They see that ETH powers the prediction markets they see online, and ETH also powers the new tokenized stocks being launched by Robinhood. As milestone legislative proposals like the GENIUS Act and CLARITY Act emerge, this wave of innovation will only intensify. Ethereum, as a platform driving the future global economy, is attracting increasing attention.
Ethereum was built for this moment from the start. In terms of security, assurances, and resilience, Ethereum is top-notch. As the genesis block marks its tenth anniversary, it's a celebration of its unparalleled achievements in digital and traditional asset technology over the past decade.
· Economic Security: With over $100 billion in staked capital and over 1 million validators, Ethereum has built a strong defense, effectively repelling attacks.
· Network Effects: Ethereum boasts the deepest liquidity, the most developers (twice as many as the next closest blockchain), and the richest application ecosystem. The EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) standard dominates smart contract development, with all major stablecoins built on Ethereum as their primary platform.
· Validated Adaptability and Ongoing Upgrades: Through complex upgrades such as the Merge (transition to proof of stake, reducing energy consumption by 99.95%) and Dencun (reducing 90% of aggregate fees), Ethereum has demonstrated resilience and continuous improvement in its first decade, with no downtime.
· Global Neutrality and Decentralization: Unlike other centrally controlled blockchains, Ethereum is not governed by a single company or entity. Its over 1 million validator nodes span across 80+ countries/regions, with over 67% of nodes operating outside the United States, showcasing its anti-fragility and dependable neutrality.
· Institutional Validation and Adoption: Global institutions such as BlackRock, JPMorgan Chase, Visa, and Franklin Templeton have started leveraging Ethereum for tokenized assets, payments, and private equity investments, validating its security model and reliability. The total value of real-world assets tokenized on Ethereum has exceeded $13 billion, with a monthly growth rate of up to 6.75%.
Despite Ethereum's technological maturity and ongoing consolidation of the digital asset infrastructure market, its economic potential is still in its early stages. The cryptocurrency market cap represents only 0.3% of global wealth, and tokenized securities are only a small fraction of the capital market.
However, regulatory clarity, especially in the United States, is accelerating the adoption of cryptocurrency, shifting from resistance to embracing digital assets. The convergence of artificial intelligence and blockchain has fueled an unprecedented demand for trustless infrastructure: as AI agents begin to trade at machine speed, they will need machine trust. Ethereum is the only infrastructure prepared for an economic environment that requires algorithmic mutual trust.
For institutions, holding Ether (ETH) means owning the digital economic infrastructure at a price far below its ultimate value. ETH can be used to pay for network transactions and serves as a store of value. Unlike Bitcoin, ETH can also generate cash flow through staking. Furthermore, similar to stocks, as the Ethereum platform becomes more widespread, the value of ETH will also increase. It combines the properties of commodities, currency, and capital assets into a unique and highly attractive asset.
As pointed out in the Trustware report, ETH, as an economic bandwidth, secures the expected issuance and trading of assets on the platform in the coming years, driving its value to grow strongly.
The Trustware machine is built. It continues to operate, self-improve, create more value, and attract more users. The issue is not whether to believe in Ethereum, but whether to believe in digitalized trust. If believed, then the rationale for investing in a part of the future global economic base layer is self-evident.
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